It always seemed unlikely that Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader, would vote to convict the disgraced ex-president who, even from exile in Mar-a-Lago, holds sway over most of his party.
But the justification McConnell offered when announcing his vote for acquittal Saturday was an act of political cynicism and a weaselly evasion of the main issue the Senate was asked to decide: whether Donald Trump bears responsibility for the sacking of the Capitol on Jan. 6.
McConnell has already said what he thinks about the facts: Trump is guilty of incitement, at least under a common-sense definition of the word.
“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said in a Senate speech last month. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding” — the certification of President Biden’s election — “which they did not like.”
For the usually sphinx-like McConnell, that was a moment of stunning clarity — as close to an act of courage as we’ve seen lately in a party whose members are alternately enthralled or terrified by Trump.
But McConnell then retreated, voting to spare Trump from being held accountable — not because he is innocent, but on narrow procedural grounds.
“While a close call, I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal, and we therefore lack jurisdiction,” he wrote to other senators before the vote.
Even though Trump was impeached when he was president, McConnell argued, he cannot be put on trial after the end of his term.
Most legal scholars, conservatives and liberals alike, believe that argument is wrong. In past centuries, the Senate has tried at least two officials who were no longer in power. And last week, by a bipartisan vote of 56 to 44, the Senate upheld those precedents.
THE MOTIVE for McConnell’s retreat is clear: He wants to give his Republican colleagues a cover story, a technical excuse to vote against impeachment so it doesn’t come back to haunt them. Most Republican primary voters remain loyal to Trump, often fiercely so.
But the reason McConnell is providing is so flimsy that it’s unlikely to stand up well in the eyes of history.
McConnell’s dodge wasn’t the only weak excuse GOP senators reached for as they searched for reasons to acquit a defendant many of them privately believe to be guilty.
Some engaged in old-fashioned tit for tat: Sure, Trump riled up the mob, but didn’t some Democrats do the same thing when they made excuses for violence on the fringes of Black Lives Matter protests?
“You had a summer where people all over the country were doing similar kinds of things,” Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri said. So what’s the big deal about Trump encouraging the people who sacked the Capitol and threatened to kill the vice president?
Equally weak was the assertion that the impeachment was “just politics,” a product of hatred for Trump and his followers.
